Every year we would throw a big show during February or March in the Bay Area of California and invite all of the Rivalry bands plus a few friends' bands to play. This was our way of getting everyone together at least once a year, since our bands were from every corner of North America. Looking back, these were some of my favorite times while doing Rivalry Records. This is what created the family atmosphere that made Rivalry so special for all of us. John Eightclip donated his talents by filming and editing each show for release on DVD, while Zach Harlan created the layouts for the DVD. During each show, various members of the Rivalry family would help John with filming, conducting interviews, etc. I'm so happy we have these DVD's to preserve the memories of these special times in all of our lives. John Eightclip is a very talented dude, and all credit for these DVD's goes to him and his vision. We did not release Rivalry Showcase 2008 on DVD because Rivalry wasn't doing as many releases anymore. John did still edit the footage and put the finished product online for free. The film from each band's set at Rivalry Showcase 2008 is linked further below.

John, Duane, and Ross explaining what Allegiance and Rivalry meant to them. Watch this and you'll understand everything I've been saying above about the Rivalry family. Click above to watch, or watch on Vimeo for a larger version.

Go It Alone Retrospective

Members of Allegiance discussing the importance of Go It Alone to the Rivalry family. This was included as bonus footage on the Rivalry Showcase 2007 DVD. Click above to watch, or watch on Vimeo for a larger version.

In case you haven't seen it, I've been compiling photos of my entire vinyl collection on my blog, Seeking The Simple. I recently made the following Rivalry Records blog entry, so I thought I would post it here as well...

Rivalry Records is a record label that I started with my best friend from childhood, Zach Harlan. What you see here are photos of every single Rivalry release, but the write-ups for each band aren't quite as detailed as what you may have read in some of the other blog entries. Granted, the Rivalry bands are full of some of my closest friends and are super important to me, so naturally I have a billion fun stories to go with each release. So you're probably wondering why I wouldn't have documented that stuff before anything else?! Well, I actually do feel a bit guilty about that, because I know the dudes have got to be wondering what's up with that! To be honest, there are 3 main reasons for that... The first is very straight forward: some of it has already been done. When I was running Rivalry, I kept a pretty tight ship on the vinyl discography. I had a lot of fun writing up all the detailed little stories about pressing mishaps or fun things about what the band wanted to do with the vinyl for that release, etc. I felt like a lot of the vinyl pressing documentation had already been covered, so I figured I'd just link directly to the Rivalry vinyl discography, which is still online. Granted, that vinyl discography only has stories about the actual vinyl pressing process, with very little about my emotional attachment to the band, or how they came to be part of the Rivalry family, etc. So I do realize that I'm leaving out a lot of the very details that have made the rest of this vinyl blog so special - the background, context, and importance of these bands and how they played a role in my personal life. So I did try to add just a little bit of that here, covering how and why the band came to have a relationship with Rivalry. But that is a nice transition into the 2nd reason why I am probably not going to write more lengthy blog posts about the importance of each release... It would feel too self-indulging and/or pompous to speak about the importance of records that I released myself, since this blog has ultimately evolved into a documentation of how others' efforts in hardcore have made a positive effect on me and my life during my formative years. I can only hope that something that I've played a part in creating has had a similar impact on someone out there. But that's not for me to write about.... That's for someone else to appreciate and reflect on. Which leads me to the 3rd reason: It just feels too overwhelming. I have a billion amazing memories of hanging out with all of the guys in each band, and how they have all positively affected my life. To try to capture all of it here would be impossible, time-consuming, and ultimately exhausting. Worse yet, I would undoubtedly leave out any number of details that would hurt people's feelings because they weren't included - and it would all be simply due to the innocence/ignorance of a fuzzy mind and/or lack of time. I just know that I can't commit to writing the volumes that I would inevitably write about Rivalry Records, because it would be a year-long project. With me being such a perfectionist, sometimes I need to keep myself in check and know when to tell myself that too much is too much.... And I know that trying to tackle a nostalgic lookback at Rivalry Records would be too much. I would end up insisting on writing a novel (literally). Hmmm.... What an idea! haha. Ok, so I'm just going to leave it at this: "Rivalry Records was an amazing 6 year period of my life when I got the unique opportunity to do something productive, inspiring, and impactful on a truly global scale with 30+ of my closest friends. I will forever be grateful to them for the commitment and faith that they put in me. Though Zach Harlan and myself were the faces of Rivalry Records, our label truly was so much more - it was a family. I always saw all of the band members/roadies/significant others, Naoma Johnston (booking shows at 924 Gilman St.), my roommate Aaron Menesez (Right On bassist), and Ryan Mattos (Rivalry screen-printer, Gilman show coordinator, Ceremony guitarist) as just as much of an integral part of Rivalry Records as anything else. Without this sense of community, I don't think Rivalry Records would have been able to accomplish even half of the things that we did. Thank you to the entire Rivalry Family, for all of your friendship, hard work, and most importantly, for all of the good times. We killed it." :)

Devotion - Bastard Son Of Affluence Blues LPs are finally in, after a few printing errors with the covers/inserts. Mark and I are going to start putting the LPs together this weekend, and hopefully they will all be mailed out sometime next week (the week of Nov 16th). I'm pretty happy about this... Even with all of the printing errors we endured - we are only 1 week late (originally slated to ship the week of Nov 10th). FYI - Revelation will not be releasing/shipping the LPs to stores until Dec 1st, so it'll be after that before they start popping up in stores and distros.

NOTE: The CDs are still NOT in yet, so if you ordered a CD, your order won't be shipping for another week or two!

If you've already bought the LP and want to get your digital download NOW, you can! Just enter the order number you received in your order confirmation email when you purchased the record. If you don't have your order number, contact us.

I'm selling some of my personal collection on eBay. Tons of test pressings and rare versions from DEATHWISH and RIVALRY, plus all kinds of stuff from the mid 90's through 2009. Over 200 items in total! Check it: eBay Auctions.

Devotion is the latest musical project from Mark Palm, the creative mind behind Go It Alone. This project finds Palm moving even further in the direction that was becoming evident in the final Go It Alone recordings: slow, dark, rock oriented hardcore. In the fall of 2008 a ten song LP entitled Bastard Son Of Affluence Blues was recorded with Jesse Gander at The Hive Creative Labs in Burnaby, British Columbia. In addition to Palm’s vocals and guitar playing, drum and percussion performances were handled by Aaron O’Neil of ON. Drawing influence from hardcore, rock, and beyond, Bastard Son Of Affluence Blues is a forty minute monolith of heavy, yet tuneful, hard volume. LP on Rivalry, CD self-released by the band (but Rivalry does have copies of the CD available for sale in the webstore). The CD is an enhanced CD-ROM with a music video for the title track on the album. LPs are all on black vinyl.

There has been a ton going on with this project, and it's been fun to watch it all come together. Many talented people have been involved and I'm thankful to all of them for lending their efforts. Check out a video interview put together by John Jenkins-Stark and Clark Todd of Eightclip Media (http://www.eightclipmedia.com), as well as a music video filmed by Amir Aghelnejad (http://www.amiraghelnejad.com).

IMPORTANT ORDERING INFO:
- LPs are all on black vinyl, no limited vinyl pressed.
- Will not ship until a week or so before street date.
- International orders: you must order 2 items on the webstore (posters do not count). If you don't want to do that, just order 1 item and then email me at mailorder@rivalryrecords.com telling me where you live. I will reply and ask you to paypal me an additional shipping amount based on where you live. Sorry, our webstore sucks and doesn't use weight+address based shipping - instead the shipping is built into each item's price.
- Online digital downloads ARE included with purchase, but will not be available until street date. To download you must SAVE YOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION NUMBER, and return to the Rivalry website on November 10th to download. Paper coupons are NOT included with the LPs themselves, so you must save your confirmation email. Download includes a quicktime copy of the music video.
- Per the band's request, there will not be iTunes or digital downloads for SALE. The only digital downloads will be available with a purchase of the physical release.

50% off every thing in the webstore - shirts, hoodies, cds, vinyl, everything.

Also -- I put up some rarities in the "distro" section of the store that are out of my personal collection. These items are not 50% off. I tried to list them below eBay prices. This will save all of us a lot of eBay hassle... For example:

I have a few copies left in my personal collection of the GIA Histories LP on RED VINYL - FRIENDS PRESS /100 (guess I don't have very many friends). Don't bitch about the price -- they sell on eBay for $30+, so I'm offering it here at $25 plus $4 for postage ($29ppd in the U.S.).

RIVALRY RECORDS Holiday Sale - 30% off EVERYTHING now through December 18th

- I ran a quick coupon through the system and marked EVERY SINGLE THING 30% off. The price you see in the store already has the 30% off built into it.
- All prices DO INCLUDE SHIPPING!!!
- The small "shipping" charge of $.50-$2.00 on checkout is just to cover paypal fees and is purely based on the amount of your order.
- Sale runs until December 18th. I will do my best to ship things ASAP so you get them by christmas.

- Please do not email me asking "where is my order" until August 1st, to allow sufficient time for all United States Post Office blunders to be out of the equation.

- PLEASE BE PATIENT, especially folks on the EAST COAST. Media mail from California to the East Coast can often take longer than international mail from California to Europe. This is farily normal. Just be patient. Media mail costs $3.00 and takes forever. Priority mail (2-3 days) costs $10-$13 from Cali to the East Coast on 1 or 2 LPs, and it's a total rip off. There's no middle ground, so media mail is the only option.

- Sorry this was a tad bit delayed. I myself only got these LPs in about 10 days ago and had to assemble them all, pack orders, etc. I'm actually amazed they got out this quickly. The only reason they did is because of the help of a very few kind friends who didn't mind working in a 105 degree garage for 5-8 hours a day.

- In fact it pretty much did ship exactly when I said it would - here is the original pre-order post: "Street date is supposedly June 10th, but due to pressing plant being over-booked for the next month, these pre-orders probably won't ship till LATE JUNE. This is an estimate, I don't have an exact ship date like our pre-orders usually do."

Expect your Verse LP pre-orders to start arriving on your doorstep sometime in the ballpark of June 20th-June 30th.

I only just now just got the Verse LPs in. The pressing plant has been really backed up lately. So that means the street date for the LP version got pushed back to June 17th (from the original June 10th date).

Please don't bitch and complain that you "could have just bought it from a distro" when you start seeing them showing up in stores/distros on street date of June 17th. Because of the delay, my distributor(s) and myself got the records on the exact same day (today). That means whoever can process their orders faster will get the records out first.... And trust me, the distributors have a hell of a lot more manpower than I do, so they'll get their copies out to the world quicker than I ever could. I'm just one dude working on these after work and on the weekends, assembling thousands of LPs and packaging hundreds of pre-orders, with the help of a few kind friends who come over and help me out after work. So please just be patient.

Thanks to everyone for ordering and expect to see them later this month!